Not all urban legends are made up for kicks.
Many are completely true, and that includes some seriously terrifying stories.
You've got ax-wielding psychos, secret tunnels sprawling under entire cities, and dangerous
men in the woods.
They're real, and so are these other creepy urban legends.
Bunny terror
There are a few stories surrounding the Bunny Man Bridge in Fairfax County, Virginia.
According to one, the area was home to a disturbed teenager who put on a bunny costume before
hanging himself from the overpass.
In standard urban legend fare, he haunts the bridge and disembowels trespassers with an
ax.
However, Brian Conley, a local historian, found that the Bunny Man has a basis in truth.
Conley says the legend is actually told all over the Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. area.
The whole region echoes with tales of a man in a white bunny suit.
"Silly Rabbit."
"Trix are for…"
"...kids."
That was enough to make him wonder if there was something to it, and when he started combing
through newspapers, he found the origins of the tale.
In 1970, an Air Force cadet reported being in a car with his fiancee when a man in a
white bunny suit jumped out of the bushes, yelled at them, and hurled a hatchet through
the car window.
They weren't hurt, but two weeks later a security guard came across the same Bunny Man, hacking
away at the roof supports of a new house.
There was a major investigation, but police never found out who was in the costume, and
he never appeared again.
Rats in the toilet
This one is most common in big cities like New York, but you can find variations on it
all over.
Supposedly, rats live in the sewers and it's entirely possible that one will just swim
up some pipes and end up in someone's toilet.
The lucky victims will just open the lid to find a rat treading water there.
The unlucky ones will be sitting on the toilet when it happens.
It sounds unlikely, but it's completely and terrifyingly true.
The Seattle Times even ran a 2016 piece warning readers what to do when a rat made an appearance
in their toilets.
It happens way more than anyone would think.
The King County Public Health Department answers between 50 and 80 rat-in-toilet occurrences
each and every year.
Experts say the rats are trying to get into a kitchen or drain where they smell food,
but since the toilet is the easiest access to a home, that's usually where they pop up.
Out the window
Here's another pretty familiar urban legend with a healthy dose of cautionary tale thrown
in.
It involves a man plummeting to his death outside the building where he works.
It turns out the man was a lawyer who was awfully fond of demonstrating just how strong
the windows in his building were by throwing himself at them, dozens of floors up.
One day, the window breaks and that's it for the unfortunate, overconfident attorney.
Who would do that?
Torontoist says this man was real, his name was Garry Hoy, and he had a weird habit of
slamming against the windows of his office at Toronto's TD Centre.
On one July day in 1993, he did it in front of a group of visiting students.The window
popped out of the frame, and Hoy popped out of the building.
He fell 24 stories, and while it's unclear exactly why he thought any of this was a good
idea, it did have consequences for his coworkers.
The firm, Holden Day Wilson, closed three years after the incident, in part due to an
inability to recover from the tragedy.
Abandoned asylum boogeyman
The basics of this tale is simple: Cropsey was rumored to be a madman who lived in the
woods of Staten Island and hunted misbehaving children.
He was said be an escaped patient from a local institution, with a hook for a hand that he
would use to drag his prey back to his lair.
Parents would threaten their children with abduction by Cropsey if they didn't behave.
Whether the parents knew it or not, Cropsey was terrifyingly real.
The Willowbrook State School closed in 1987, after becoming the subject of an infamous
1972 expose by Geraldo Rivera.
It wasn't long after Willowbrook's closure that former employee Andre Rand was arrested
in connection with several disappearances.
He was ultimately convicted after authorities found a child's body buried in a shallow grave
on the grounds of the institution.
Rand was ultimately linked to other disappearances but has steadfastly maintained his innocence.
Some don't believe he was the killer at all, but the fact remains someone was.
Internet handle
Anyone who was online during the early days of the internet probably remembers seeing
forwarded emails warning about someone with the screen name "Slavemaster."
"Just leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet!"
The emails were pretty straightforward: if someone with that screen name reached out,
he should be avoided at all costs.
Supposedly, the screen name belong to a man looking to convince unsuspecting women to
meet him in real life so he could kill them.
Sound unlikely?
It was 100 percent true, and his name was John Edward Robinson, Sr.
Those at his church knew him as a devoted family man, neighborhood activist, and brilliant
entrepreneur.
Local authorities apparently knew he had once been convicted of being a con artist, but
no one suspected the depths of his depravity.
Upon investigation, it was discovered he had a long history of horrible behavior before
he even adopted his "Slavemaster" identity.
He was ultimately linked to the disappearance of a number of women, including a Polish college
student and a 27-year-old home care nurse.
Finally, a 34-year-old woman he targeted called the police.
When they searched his home, they found bodies sealed in 55-gallon metal barrels.
Robinson had beaten his victims to death, and although it's unclear just how many women
he murdered, police did find more bodies that he'd been keeping for years.
What's that smell?
The story starts with someone settling into a hotel room and noticing a strange smell.
They might complain, they might not, but they always spend a few days in the room before
the smell gets so unbearable they investigate fully.
It's only then they find the dead body under the mattress.
This isn't just true, it happens with terrifying regularity.
Each time, guest complaints led to a complete search of a hotel room and the discovery of
a dead body.
The stories are surprisingly varied.
The first body was Gary Smith, a car thief poisoned and strangled by his associates,
then left under the bed of a New Jersey motel room that was rented about four times before
he was found.
Two bodies discovered in two different motels in 1989 were the work of the same killer,
Jerry Lee Dunbar.
In 2003, a man spent three nights in a Kansas City room before the smell became so unbearable
he checked out.
When the room was cleaned, a man in "an advanced stage of decomposition" was found under the
mattress.
In short, if something smells in your hotel room, ask for a cleaning sooner rather than
later.
The Green Man
Urban legend says there's a horribly disfigured creature that wanders the forests and highways
around Pittsburgh.
Sometimes he's called the Green Man.
Sometimes he's called Charlie No-Face.
Sometimes, he's even called the Monster of Beaver County.
All of these names are awful, because he was actually a very sweet man named Ray Robinson.
In 1919, eight-year-old Robinson had an accident that changed his life forever.
He was climbing a trolley trestle when he touched a live power line and was electrocuted.
He lost one hand, and his face was melted.
He grew up incredibly isolated and at night, he liked to walk the local highways.
Even into the 21st century, teens cruise the highways looking for the Green Man.
But those who grew up in the area in the 1960s actually found him.
Some were incredibly cruel to him, and others made a friend who changed their lives.
Robinson liked to chat with the kind ones, talk baseball, and drink beer.
Documentary writer Tisha York interviewed hundreds who met him, and summed him up like
this:
"People were just so cruel to him, and he never understood why…underneath it all was
this beautiful, kind man."
Robinson died in 1985, but his legend lives on.
Souvenirs from abroad
Here's the terrifying story: someone goes on vacation, then comes back and starts suffering
severe headaches or earaches not long after.
The cause?
Bugs crawled into the hapless vacationer's ears and nested in their brain.
Sorry, but this one isn't just true, it's happened a couple of times.
In 2013, Rochelle Harris returned to Britain from a holiday in Peru.
When she started hearing scratching noises, she was a little worried.
It got worse when the headaches started.
When she woke up with a mysterious liquid on her pillow, she decided to seek medical
attention for what she thought was an ear infection.
The truth?
A fly she'd swatted out of her ear in Peru had laid eggs in her ear canal, and she was
now home to a family of maggots.
She needed surgery to remove them.
Then, in 2015, Yadira Rostro underwent surgery after suffering from nine months of headaches.
The cause?
Tapeworm eggs in her brain.
Doctors were pretty sure she picked up the parasite when she was in Mexico two years
prior, and that it had traveled through her bloodstream and into her brain, where it laid
eggs.
Good luck enjoying another vacation!
Today's special: people
It's part urban legend, part crime drama trope.
It's the one about the serial killer who almost gets away with murder by feeding the bodies
of his victims to pigs.
"Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs.
You gotta starve the pigs for a few days."
It's used in a lot of fiction, and it's happened a lot in real life.
In 2013, The Telegraph reported on a police investigation from southern Italy.
According to taped phone conversations, Francesco Raccosta was murdered during a mafia turf
war, then his body was fed to pigs.
In 2015, USA Today reported that Susan Monica had been found guilty of not only murdering
two men, but of disposing of the bodies by feeding them to her pigs.
But the idea goes back even further, to one of Canada's most infamous serial killers.
Robert Pickton was arrested in 2002 for the murders of 26 women over the course of around
6 years.
Most were snatched off the streets of Vancouver, and according to the testimony of those who
knew him, he bragged of killing dozens of women and disposing of the bodies by feeding
them to his pigs.
Thousands of DNA samples were ultimately recovered from his farm.
Too-realistic halloween decorations
Sometimes, the most terrifying Halloween stories are the true ones.
Take, for instance, the tale of a very realistic-looking decoration.
It's so realistic, in fact, neighbors eventually call the police to come check it out.
It's only after days of sitting in plain view that someone realizes it's an actual body.
It's happened a few times.
The first incident was in 1990, when a 17-year-old Halloween hayride worker accidentally hanged
himself along the route of the attraction.
He was supposed to be portraying a hanged man when he was strangled by the prop rope.
Then, in 2005, NBC News reported that a woman committed suicide by hanging herself from
a tree along a fairly busy Delaware roadway.
She was believed to have done it late on a Tuesday night or early on a Wednesday morning,
and the people who saw her Wednesday thought it was a Halloween prank.
Police were called hours later, and only then did they discover it wasn't a prank at all.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.